Wide area computer networks, such as the Internet, have grown to transcend national boundaries such that data are easily passed from one nation to another. The international nature of the Internet has posed some problems. First, laws passed by one country with access to the Internet effectively limits content available to all other countries through the Internet to a “least common denominator,” i.e., to content which is legal in all countries which have access to the Internet. For example, one state might prohibit certain types of advertising, e.g., for legal services, such that a page on the World Wide Web for legal services in another state can violate that prohibition since the page is available in generally all of the United States. As another example, one country might have very strict decency laws prohibiting distribution of material which is generally acceptable in other countries. Distribution of such material in these other countries through the Internet can potentially violate the strict decency laws in the first country.
A second problem is that providers of digital products sold and/or distributed through the Internet are generally limited to world-wide distribution notwithstanding cultural, demographic, and legal issues which can make world-wide distribution provided by the Internet unattractive while the immediacy and convenience of distribution through the Internet is still important.
What is therefore needed is a mechanism by which digital products can be distributed through wide area networks such as the Internet while overcoming the disadvantages mentioned above.